Betting on Bitcoin: Coinbase Wants to Be the PayPal of the Internet-Only Currency

Does an Internet-only currency — not backed by any government entity — have a chance to become the way merchants and consumers transact business? Coinbase not only believes so, but it has talked investors into giving it some start-up capital to build a much easier way for nontechnical users to pay with Bitcoin. For those of you who don’t know (and let’s assume that’s a lot of you), Bitcoin is an Internet-created digital currency designed to avoid fees for transferring money and to eliminate the need for credit card companies. Instead of being backed by gold or a government entity, Bitcoin is a bit of a rogue movement that creates value by solving mathematical calculations. The difficulty of solving the problems is what triggers the value, because of scarcity. Since the open source concept was started in 2009, Bitcoin has experienced a wild ride. On one side of the coin, it...